Sunday, 19 June 2016

On the 25–26 May the Welsh Chronicles Research Group hosted
a two-day conference at Cambridge on ‘Chronicles in Medieval Wales and its
Neighbours’. The conference, organised by myself, Ben Guy (ASNC), Georgia
Henley (Harvard; matric. MPhil ASNC 2010), and Dr Owain Wyn Jones (Bangor; matric.
BA ASNC 2006), brought together scholars from a wide range of international
institutions to share and discuss recent research on medieval chronicles.
Whilst the research group is focused primarily on the study of chronicles from
medieval Wales, we also invited specialists working on chronicles from Ireland,
Scotland, and England, in order to facilitate wider and more comparative
discussion. The Welsh Chronicles Research Group has previously organised two
symposia (Bangor 2014 and Glasgow 2015), but this was our largest event to
date, and proved to be an exciting and stimulating two days.

The first day of the conference, held at the English
Faculty, opened with a session focused on the early medieval period, with
papers by Dr Nicholas Evans (University of Hull) on the Annals of Ulster, Dr Roy
Flechner (UCD) on Chronicles and Canon Law, and myself on Asser’s use of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Discussion continued through the coffee break before the
next session turned to a later period, with Dr Joshua Byron Smith (University
of Arkansaw) discussing the Welsh material that Gregory of Caerwent
incorporated into his chronicle and Ben Guy presenting on Brut Ieuan Brechfa,
an early Tudor version of Brut y Tywysogyon, examining Ieuan Brechfa’s
adaptation of the Brut and how it related to other versions. The session was
brought to a close with something a bit different as we welcomed Scott Lloyd
from the ‘Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales’,
who gave us a presentation on the Battlefields Inventory, a project attempting
to map the locations of all recorded battles in Wales.

After lunch we were delighted to welcome J. Beverley Smith,
Professor Emeritus in Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, to give the
keynote lecture. Professor Smith gave a masterful analysis of Vita Griffini filii
Conani (a text discovered and edited by ASNC's Professor Paul Russell), in
which he drew attention particularly to the text's classical models and also to
the problems of identifying later accretions present in both the Latin and
Welsh versions. Observations concerning the latter led him to suggest an
alternative date and context for the composition of the Vita.

The day was brought to a close with a session on chronicles
in medieval Scotland. Professor Dauvit Broun (University of Glasgow) used the
Chronicle of Melrose as a case study to present an exciting new approach to the
study of chronicles, whilst Dr John Reuben Davies (University of Glasgow), also
focusing on the Chronicle of Melrose, examined its thirteenth-century sources. Dr
Owain Wyn Jones (Bangor University) had the final word of the day with a presentation
on the website of the Welsh Chronicles Research Group, which provides summaries
of various medieval chronicles (including bibliographical detail) as well as
recent editions of certain important texts.

Dr Owain Wyn Jones presenting on the website of the Welsh Chronicles Research Group

As the first day came to an end we could reflect on what had
been a wonderful day of papers and debate, and the discussion continued over
the conference dinner at La Margherita, and well into the night thereafter. We
still had much to look forward to however, with two sessions taking place on
Thursday morning, this time held in the Divinity School of St John’s College. Dr
David Stephenson (Bangor University) started proceedings with a paper exploring
annalistic references to events in southern Powys in the late-twelfth century,
before Henry Gough-Cooper (independent scholar) talked to us about the textual
relationships between versions of the ‘Annales Cambriae’ group of Welsh Latin
Chronicles. ASNC’s own Professor Paul Russell closed the session with a paper
on the Latin rhetoric of Chronica de Wallia, examining its similarities to a Welsh
marwnad.

The final session opened with a paper by Georgia Henley
(Harvard), drawing on her work editing the ‘Cardiff Annals’, and assessing their
relationship with the annals of Tewksbury, followed by an examination of the Annála
Gearra as Proibhinse Ard Macha by Dr Denis Casey (National University of Ireland,
Maynooth), with some interesting food for thought on the construction of
chronology in the text. Bringing proceedings to a close, Professor Chris
Given-Wilson (University of St Andrew’s) took us forward to the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries with his examination of Adam Usk’s attitude towards the Welsh.

There was general agreement that the conference had been a
productive affair, and had sparked exciting debate and discussion. We were not
the only ones who thought the conference to be exciting however. A press
release on the event by St John’s College caught the attention of BBC Wales,
who expressed a keen interest in learning more about Welsh Chronicles. This was
how I found myself wearing headphones and sitting in front of a microphone at
the BBC Cambridgeshire studio at 7.45am on the first morning of the conference.
‘Good Morning Wales’ (BBC Wales), and ‘Post Cyntaf’ (Radio Cymru) took it in
turns to pose a series of questions about Welsh Chronicles, the direction of
our research, and medieval Wales more generally. The idea of chronicles as a
medium for recording events and sharing news caught the imagination of ‘Good
Morning Wales’, with the presenter comparing the medieval chronicle to a
modern-day smartphone!

The media attention didn’t end with the radio however, and
BBC Wales subsequently produced an article on the conference (‘Delving into the
Welsh Dark Ages’), which can be accessed here:

About Me

This blog is written and maintained by members of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge. We study the history, languages, literatures and material culture of medieval Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia.
For more information about us go to: http://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk